The present invention relates generally to the field of conference calling, and more particularly to organizing and recording conference calls using speaker and topic hierarchies.
A conference call is a telephone call in which the calling party wishes to have more than one called party listen in to the audio portion of the call. The conference call may be designed to allow the called party to participate during the call, or the call may be set up so that the called party merely listens into the call and cannot speak. A conference call is sometimes called an audio tele-conference (ATC). Conference calls can be designed so that the calling party calls the other participants and adds them to the call; however, participants are usually able to call into the conference call, themselves, by dialing a telephone number that connects to a conference bridge. A conference bridge is a specialized type of equipment that links telephone lines.
A hierarchy is an arrangement of items (e.g., objects, names, values, categories, etc.) in which the items are represented as being above, below, or at the same level as one another. In the present invention a hierarchy is used to depict the division of a discussion into topics, sub-topics, sub-sub-topics, and so on. The highest level of the hierarchy is thought of as the discussion itself.